Monthly Archives: May 2014

Children who are 20% or more than their model weight are obese and obesity is becoming a difficult problem to tackle. As they say prevention is better than cure, identifying the problem is crucial for parents. Childhood obesity can have both short-term as well as long-term psychological and physical effects on the child. High blood pressure, cardiovascular ailments, diabetes, high cholesterol, stroke, gall stones, sleep apnea and others.

Often obese children have to face bullying in school and neighbourhood. To understand, obesity is less activity and more calorie intake. And to fight obesity the kids have to increase their physical activities. Speed and agility exercises are great for kids to fight obesity and lead a healthy and active life.

Speed Agility Exercises

Cone Pursuit: This game needs two people and one of them is a rabbit and the other one is a hound. Set the cones in any arrangement. The rabbit starts with one, two or three-second headstart. The rabbit must run from run through the cones with getting caught and tagged by the hound who must follow the same pattern. This helps in building agility for various sports.

Circle Run: This activity can be done alone or with other kids. For this activity, you need a tennis ball and a smooth surface. To start, the partner rolls the ball from one side towards a boundary about 40 feet away. When the ball is rolled, the player has to move around the ball as many times as possible before the ball reaches the boundary. One can also use a foot ball or basket ball for this exercise.

Athletes love the ability to run fast without losing balance. Many believe that speed is a god-gift, however you can develop speed and agility by single-mindedly training using speed agility equipments. By doing these exercises you can develop your agility skills. Agility is more crucial than speed as it is the ability of an athlete to move quickly from side to side or change direction swiftly while running at a fast speed.

Check out these agility exercises.

Cone Taps: Do high knees by placing a cone in front of you. Also, you have to tap the cone with the raised foot. You just have to gently tap the top and not knock it down. This exercise helps in getting strong feet and ankles; it also helps in building agility.

Zig-Zag Cone Exercise: Keep 5-10 cones in a zig-zag formation and space them out about 6 feet. Also, the cone should be placed 45 degrees from the other. Start out by running toward the first cone to run around it. As soon as you reach the cone get ready to shift your weight and getting lower to the ground.

Lateral Hurdle Jumps: You can use GSI’s cone or small hurdles for this particular exercise. Take a cone or small hurdle and keep it next to you. Jump laterally from one side to another and you have to lift the inside leg just high enough to clear the hurdle or cone. This exercise will improve your agility.

Sport drills are known for their fat-burning ways. You don’t have to play a particular sport to burn fat, you can easily burn them by doing agility exercises. Apart from burning fat, these exercises increase strength, balance, power as well as coordination.

Sports drills are more like playing sports. Agility is the ability to change direction in a swift as well as effective manner. In order to change the direction in an effective way, the person has to build coordination between balance, strength and speed. Agility drills using agility ladder help in burning fat and get that fabulous body.

Begin with your right side and face the end of the agility ladder. You have to stand on your right leg and jump sideways into each box staying on the same leg until you finish one cycle of reaching the end of the ladder. Do the same with the other leg and go back down the ladder to the beginning point.

By doing this exercise, you improve the strength in each leg and tendons.